It’s become a joke, of course, to say that many white people voted for Trump out of “economic anxiety”. While I do think it’s true that long-term median wage stagnation has had a strong effect on our national politics, it seems to me that it’s condescending, at best, to say of a group of people that their economic circumstances made them so stupid they though they were acting in their own best interests when they voted for a delusional asshole who will clearly do nothing to help them materially. Voting for Trump was a moral failing. Tom Nichols writes:
These are the politics of resentment. Although inevitably poisonous, resentment feels good. It gives meaning to a life in turmoil. It allows voters to dismiss facts at will. It’s a great rationale for staying put and staying mad. It gives focus to an otherwise inchoate rage. Why is your life less than you want it to be? It’s all Don Lemon’s fault.
The only response to such irrational and even hateful politics is to bypass pointless arguments and instead try to rouse a sense of basic decency. Are you arguing that black families were better off under slavery? Shame on you. Do you really believe America is no better than Russia? Shame on you.
Also too, shame on the Chris Cillizzas and Mark Halperins of the world for portraying something as a “big win for Republicans” when that something will lead to pain and even death for thousands or millions of people.
Nichols is a conservative and I probably don’t agree with him about much. But he’s completely right about this, and I wish that other conservative pundits would say this about Trump voters instead of making excuses for them.
Update. I don’t love Nichols or anything like that. More and more I find myself not agreeing much with analyses of Trump and Trumpism that come from other people of my political persuasion. Trump is an asshole and a traitor and the people who voted for him committed a terrible moral transgression. Trump’s not a savvy tactician, he’s not going to succeed in leading us towards fascism, the Russia probe is not illegitimate, and Trump supporters are not good people who just felt the weight of anxiety. But most of the liberal commentators I respect believe at least one of those things, and it drives me crazy.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
I first read the title as “shame on a wigger, which made me think of Martina Big’s appearance on Maury. (I would recommend a pair of ice picks, a bottle of bleach, and no food for at least two hours previously before Googling).
Yarrow
I agree with the excerpt you quoted, but have to say this bit cracked me up:
Poor Don Lemon. He gets blamed for so much.
Doug!
@Yarrow:
That was probably my favorite part. I love the idea that Don Lemon is masterminding the subjugation of American conservatives.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Yarrow: To be fair, his 2014 was literally the goddamned fucking worst – his “was MH370 sucked into a black hole” fuckery is what got me to quit CNN permanently, for instance).
wmd
Sparrows on curtain rods.
I had an Austrian mechanic say he’s leaving California because it’s gotten so bad – his illegal Mexican co-worker makes $90,000 a year and gets health insurance for $50 a month for himself and family (wife and 4 kids), while the legal resident from Austria has to pay $1800 a month. There’s your resentment packaged in a nice Rush Limbaugh gift. The Austrian is almost certainly unaware he’s lying and has been manipulated to feel this way.
Corner Stone
Firstly, I view any writing by Tom Nichols as highly suspect. This blurb does seem to be more or less on point, however. Secondly, who is this Mark Halperin person you mention? The archives reference such a person but he disappeared into the fog of war years ago.
zhena gogolia
I was excited to go hear Tom Nichols talk a few weeks ago — but I was deeply disappointed. He spent most of the time complaining about Obama’s “feckless” foreign policy and the fact that he failed to intervene militarily in Ukraine and Syria. He hates Trump, but that’s not enough, IMO.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
“big win for Republicans”“big win for Republican reporters making high six figure salaries”
schrodingers_cat
@wmd: This is a made up example, only green card holders and citizens are eligible to apply for the ACA.
Doug!
@Corner Stone:
I hate to admit this, but I more and more I find that the articles about Trump and his supporters that ring the most true to me are ones written by conservatives. I don’t say that because I have a desire to praise conservative writing, but between the economic anxiety bulllshit in certain quarters of teh left and the “Trump is a savvy tactician” stuff from all over, I honestly find Nichols and even Jen Rubin more interesting to read on Trump than most other sources.
Doug!
@zhena gogolia:
I think he sucks. But he’s right about this.
BlueDWarrior
@schrodingers_cat: Far be it for ‘Conservatives’ to make things up to justify their outrage. It’s part of why ‘Respectability Politics’ are largely ineffective across the aisle.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@zhena gogolia:
There’s something really wrong with these people. They learned not one god damn thing from Iraq and Vietnam.
schrodingers_cat
People all over the world are watching Rs, I think we will see an eventual move away from $ as the reserve currency. Poking a finger in the eye of other countries is not going to make you popular.
zhena gogolia
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
He didn’t mention Iraq until 55 minutes into his “30-minute” talk.
Miss Bianca
@Doug!: I hate to have to agree with you on this point, but honesty compels me to do so. Stange times, strange bedfellows. I’m sure I’ll be able to go back to hating everything Nichols, Rubin, Frum et al. have to say once we have a rational Democratic actor back in the White House. Presuming that that ever happens before the US and North Korea nuke each other into oblivion, that is.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@schrodingers_cat: not only that, the ACA subsidy phases out for high incomes.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Subsidy Calculator, there is no subsidy in California for incomes at 90K (photo).
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s why it’s important to take them out of power as quickly as possible. It won’t take long to destroy our credibility in a way that is highly damaging to things like currency and investment.
schrodingers_cat
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: True, so 2 lies in trolly troll’s example.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, that was actually one of the “selling points” of the law, that it wasn’t subsidizing healthcare for undocumented immigrants. But there’s no point in making concessions to people looking to believe lies.
MattF
@Doug!: I think we need a list of ‘conservatives who aren’t afraid of Donald Trump’. I can think of a half-dozen. There are a lot more related cadetories, but it would be a start.
Corner Stone
@Doug!: I would say there are between eight and a dozen or so “Conservative” neverTrumpers that I skim their twit feed or even read posted articles. But they all manage to infuriate me by somehow forcing themselves to wedge in a criticism of HRC or sometimes even WJC. Between that and the breathless, “Something big is coming. Watch for it.” And then anything that happens they take credit for knowing ahead of time – but will never give any actual detail to judge the accuracy of their prediction/whatever/etc.
As much as I simply can not stand John Schindler, I do somewhat agree with his take on how the Kremlin viewed the Obama WH.
And The Education of Jen Rubin has been mind boggling the last two to three months. She’s even dropped the thrown in Obama/HRC bashing for the most part.
TenguPhule
The fatal flaw in this line of reasoning is that these fuckers do not feel shame.
Corner Stone
@wmd: C’mon, man. You’re not even trying with this one.
Doug!
@Corner Stone:
I hate Schindler too but also think he’s basically right about Trump and Russia. And another thing: half the liberals I read also throw in “Hillary sucks” stuff in half their pieces.
zhena gogolia
@Corner Stone:
Yes, that’s why I can read her pieces all the way through without gagging. In the Nichols piece quoted above, he gets in digs at the Clintons for “sex and lies,” etc., it’s infuriating.
SFAW
@Doug!:
And yet he still couldn’t resist the temptation to talk about how terrible the Clintons are. I’ll give him a read when he stops with the “both sides” bullshit. “Well, the GOPers shouldn’t have voted for a quasi-pedophile or a serial assaulter, but can you blame them for thinking the Dems are evil?”
Fuck him.
ETA: I see I’m not the first to point out his “gotta bash teh Evul Libs, for balance” bullshit.
TenguPhule
@Doug!:
Because they’ve polished their fangs savaging innocent targets.
Imagine their glee to finally turn them on the guilty.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug!: Its the party and its followers that are the problem more than just the poodlehead at the top.
BlueDWarrior
@TenguPhule: Which is a problem because shame is one of the best non-violent motivators we have.
There is a reason why in my depressed states I think these people are trying to heighten the contradictions from the right-wing end to get the cataclysmic schism they always wanted. Oh they will finally be rid of [those people they hate] once and for all, yes they will.
Then I remember that a lot of them are cowards and if it did come to blows, a lot of them might literally run screaming for the hills.
germy
wmd
@Corner Stone: really happened. I was surprised at the man’s insistence that he shouldn’t be paying for an illegal.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
I really think Jen Rubin is on the verge of a full-on, Cole-style flip. I can’t imagine anything Trump or the Republicans could do at this point that she would approve of.
GregB
Nichols is conservative and sometimes snarky but he has indeed been hyper-critical of Trump and Trumpism and for that I am apppreciative.
Also, the stock market closed down today, in their moment of triumph.
Also Mark Warner.
MJS
@wmd: Austrian, you say? Hmmm…
randy khan
My take on Trump voters always has been that I’ll take any of them so long as the price of getting them does not involve giving in on Democratic principles. I’m entirely open to thinking of new ways to persuade them to vote the right way, but only to persuading them, not morphing the party and its platform to be more like the other side.
On those terms, we may not get a lot of Trump voters, and I’m okay with that. We don’t necessarily need them if we turn out the voters who already agree with us – look at Virginia and Alabama.
JPL
Sen. Warner is speaking on the floor of the senate in a preemptive bid to prevent firing of Rosenstein and Mueller.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@MattF: Last week I saw Bill Kristol on MSNBC talking about Obama being a great president.
Max Boot goes off like a bomb every time he’s on – crushing his former party.
Right wing antisemitism has “Woke” them up.
Bobby Thomson
You respect some pretty dumb ass people who don’t seem that liberal. That’s what happens when you fall into a cult of personality based on a Russian asset.
Yarrow
@Doug!: I find them interesting as well. I’m not sure about more interesting but I like seeing their point of view. I don’t know if it’s because they’ve turned on their fellow Republicans, or because they have an insider’s view of what they criticize, or what.
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know if she will but she’s the one that, if she did flip, would be the least surprising to e.
Yarrow
@GregB:
LOL. That also made me laugh. Is the tax abomination already factored in? If so, we could be in for a bumpy ride in the near future. Trump’s already poor approval ratings will collapse if the stock market tanks.
Major Major Major Major
Conservatives are much more likely to believe in us-vs-them framing, moral absolutes, and realpolitik. Usually this is to their detriment. In the current situation, these are actually useful traits.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: you may be right about Jen Rubin. At least, I’d like to hope so. The others, not so much.
germy
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
All those years of right wing anti-black racism didn’t faze them.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@germy: Who watches the watchmen?
BlueDWarrior
@Yarrow: I dunno, the market will probably bounce around. But I think it’s been the goal for the Titans of Industry to decouple the stock market game from the wider economy since forever.
I mean why should they have to suffer if the peons don’t feel like buying their lovely products and services? Their wealth should increase forever and ever because they worked hard damnit.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: it’s because they only care about shit like that when it’s their ox being gored. Also many are racist.
germy
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Human Resources
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
Wu buck wild with the trigger.
Yutsano
@wmd: The Austrian could certainly just go back to Austria. If he’s a green card holder, he’s still a citizen of the Republic of Austria. And they have universal health care.
The rest of your example is right wing babble. Do better.
BlueDWarrior
@germy: True, but it has withered the ranks of Black Conservatives down to your sundry cranks, crackpots, and grifters.
Like how many Black Republicans can get on TV and actually properly string a sentence together except for the literal handful of Black Republicans left in Congress (I can honestly only think of two, Tim Scott and Mia Love).
Bobby Thomson
@Doug!: you just need to read smarter liberals. Hint: they aren’t in the Wilmer camp.
wmd
@MJS: yes. American wife. Both late 50s early 60s… Very angry that California requires safety testing of firearms and Rugar decided not to test some .22 calibre firearms they want for their arsenal. They blame the state for a corporate decision not to meet requirements and will move to a state where unsafe firearms can be purchased… Not that Rugar makes unsafe firearms..
RinaX
@TenguPhule:
LOL, I had the exact same thought.
Major Major Major Major
@Bobby Thomson: you’ve read the sort of stuff he references and people he talks to.
The Moar You Know
@germy: Most people, lacking even basic empathy, don’t “get it” until they’re on the receiving end. And as soon as they are not on the receiving end of it, they will go right back to not giving a shit about black folks.
zhena gogolia
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Yeah, they flogged that Weinstein story for all it was worth. What hypocrisy.
tobie
@germy: Fuck! Franken leaves on dubious allegations of copping a feel in very public settings without an investigation, while Glenn Thrush maintains his job at one of the very best places in journalism despite credible accusations of serious harassment. FSM, what have we done to earn your wrath?
DougJ
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s a good way of putting it
John PM
Testify, Doug! Testify!!!!
The Moar You Know
@wmd: He can move back to Austria and not own any handguns at all.
I’ll say this as a gun owner who’s fired some substandard firearms – the CA safety test requirements are not in any way onerous to manufacturers and they’re a godsend to people who don’t enjoy having pieces of slide or hammer buried in their sinuses or eyeballs.
GregB
@Yarrow:
One wonders how the rest of the planet will respond to Donnie and Nikki global bullying campaign?
Seems like a bad bet to place money in the hands of bullies who don’t hold up bargains.
germy
The Moar You Know
@tobie: The Democratic party did that one to itself, so own it.
MattF
@GregB: Trump’s combination of dishonesty, delusion, stupidity, and corruption has earned him a large number brand-new friends from all over the world.
Millard Filmore
@Yarrow:
Whew! Last week I figured out how to log into my Money Market account and moved about 20% of the money into Asian stocks.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@germy: It’s sad. The neocons started out as extreme leftist. Kristol’s dad was a self described marxist. They opposed the Vietnam war and supported national guaranteed income.
And then in the late 60s/early 70s they went nuts over the middle east and the soviets because the latter was provided arms and technical advisors to arab client states like syria and because of their invasion of czechoslovakia. They also freaked out when mainline liberals started to object to conditions in the west bank and gaza.
So they decided to align themselves with the most anti russian anti arab vessel, even if that was a party dominated by christian fascists and bigots. It’s sad because bigotry has no bounds. World history shows hatred and scapegoating may be focus for for a time on people of color and teh gays, but eventually they turn their hatred against the joooos.
DougJ
@Bobby Thomson:
Glenn?
patrick II
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
You clearly don’t know about the Secret Illegal Mexican Imigrant ACA Subsidy (SIMIAS) because you are not an illegal Mexican. Illegal Mexicans find out about it from Obama’s Secret Encrypted Email System (SEE).
wmd
@The Moar You Know: I agree. I’ve not fired low quality firearms. Rugar could easily submit current Mk 2 target pistols and get passed.
His wife votes, and resentment drives her vote. He just kvetches and buys guns.
It is surprising because it’s Santa Cruz county.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Looking at the numbers, Raygoon was at 49% because unemployment was high at 8.6% and inflation was high at 8.4%
So when unemployment and inflation declined, Raygoon’s numbers went up.
Today the unemployment rate is at 4.1% and inflation is at 2.2%. Drumpf can’t count on any future decline to boost his ratings. It only gets worse from here.
Miss Bianca
@germy: Why is he not being *crucified* for making remarks like this? Wait, wait, don’t tell me…TrueConservatism cannot fail, it can only *be* failed.
Yep…”guillotine grease” is a concept that is definitely going to have to make it out into the broader public consciounsess.
tobie
@The Moar You Know: I didn’t do it, so no, I don’t believe I own it. But I’m mighty angry that the Party pushed him out the door.
JohnO
The horror of Nov. ’16 was, to me, the sudden and pretty darned harsh realization that so many of my fellow countrymen/women were lousy human beings. They ARE, as is now well known, Stupid or Evil, or both. I’m done with them.
I have never held a vote against anyone personally until now.
Corner Stone
@tobie:
2020 Presidential ambitions know no boundaries.
MattF
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: You have to try to picture exactly who’s actually on the margin between ‘approve’ and ‘disapprove’. I can’t, myself, but it’s clearly down to a hard core.
Corner Stone
@Millard Filmore: I’m not a Financial Advisor, so YMMV, but if the US tanks, markets in Asia will tank like tanks trying to swim the English Channel.
Barbara
Tom Nichols and Jen Rubin are each in their own respective ways neocons but they have a moral compass when it comes to domestic policy issues. Jen Rubin, in particular, has a hair trigger level discernment of anti-semitism and she knew it when she saw it in Trump’s actions and rhetoric and those of his supporters. It scared her. That is not to say that I agree with them on every issue, and in particular, their blind spot is the inability to judge President Obama with anything approaching fairness. The inability of people like them to see their own failure where Obama is concerned is a big reason why we now have Trump. So even though they do understand how horrible Trump is they don’t understand how the anti-Obama (as well as anti-Clinton) psychosis of people like themselves contributed to getting us where we are.
ETA: Neocons not neo-liberals, which is really an economic concept.
joel hanes
Doug! claims
Trump’s … not going to succeed in leading us towards fascism
Since that says “towards fascism” instead “into full-blown fascism”,
I’d say that Trump already has done so,
and the effort has already been more successful than I would have believed possible.
Corner Stone
@Miss Bianca: We have to keep them nice and lubed, lest they freeze up during a DC cold snap.
James E. Powell
@Doug!:
It was like this during the Bush/Cheney Junta. Democrats and ostensible liberals were overly eager to embrace any conservative who criticized Bush, especially on Iraq. All that enemy of my enemy bullshit. My view is that unless they publicly renounce Satan and all his works and all his empty promises, they can stay my enemy. Our embrace will not benefit them nor theirs our own causes.
Also similar to the Bush/Cheney era when some Democrats and ostensible liberals felt obligated to include some shitty remark about Al Gore in their writings, an apparent attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Beltway Kool Kids.
MJS
@wmd: Okay, an Austrian who likes to scapegoat “others”, is filled with resentment AND wants an arsenal. Where have I heard that before? Is he by chance also a failed artist?
MattF
@Corner Stone: SK markets are also on edge because it’s been discovered that NK is busy stealing cryptocurrency from all the SK exchanges. We’re getting into ‘Stein’s Law’ territory: ‘If something cannot go on forever, it will end’.
sharl
It looks like the OP (including the update) and a number of comments already addressed my mixed feelings about Tom Nichols. I have similar feelings about Rick Wilson. I believe that – at least in part – they are very good analysts of these Trumpkin fools because they’ve been helping to prepare the ground for them since the early 90s. That goes especially for folks like Wilson working the political end, although I’m sure few of them expected it all to bring us to this point.
Tom “Expertise is Awesome” Nichols is an interesting subcategory: a technical expert who let his own political biases prevent a wider application of his analytical capabilities and distorted his view of reality (e.g. his support of our Glorious Iraq Adventure). A tenured position at the Naval War College certainly helped facilitate that. He was just a li’l termite chewing away on his little area of the foundation until OH SHIT THE HOUSE IS COLLAPSING…or, y’know, something like that.
germy
@MJS
I blame the mustard gas.
Miss Bianca
@Barbara:
Thank you, yes. That’s exactly the point I wish I had been cogent enough to make!
germy
@sharl:
Good point and well said.
Miss Bianca
@sharl:
Ha ha, yes! Love that image!
Ocotillo
@germy: Hoocoodanode!!
A Ghost to Most
@Mnemosyne: I used to think that. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve read pretty much every column she’s written this year, and she seems to have plateaued at nominal R and committed cancervative.
wmd
@MJS:
Not to my knowledge. He’s a mechanic. Near retirement. He said he has lived in 39 states since he came to U.S. and used to think California was best… But the resentment of his coworker and not being able to buy untested firearms makes him want to move.
KithKanan
@wmd: There are some interesting people in Santa Cruz county, and not all of them are on the left.
Barbara
@sharl: It’s a big game where people sit around debating grand theories until it isn’t.
Corner Stone
Name them and shame them.
The Moar You Know
@wmd: hahahaha OMG I lived in Santa Cruz for seven years. Outside of the town it has the most right-wing lunatics of any place I’ve ever lived.
Ocotillo
I must say I messed up regarding the stock market. I have 90% of my stuff in cash since the dumpster fire took office. I should have known there would be a celebration driving the market up for a while and enjoyed the ride. I have to feel the effects of the tax bill will result in a crash in something like 2 to 6 years barring any repeal.
sharl
@germy: There was some Vanity Fair piece a week or so ago questioning the seriousness of the charges against Thrush. Some of the women journalists I follow on twitter were pissed about it. IIRC anonymous sources in the VF piece cast aspersions on Laura McGann’s (sp?) earlier big story that was largely responsible for getting Thrush suspended, stating things that would never be said about a man.
Thrush has apparently made a lot of media friends over the years, and they have apparently been quietly going to bat for him over all this.
Ocotillo
@wmd: With thinking like this, that is why we now have Trump.
MattF
@Ocotillo: IMO, we’re likely to get signficant inflation– so cash just isn’t a good idea. However, that theory doesn’t help with figuring out what is a good idea.
MJS
@wmd: Sorry, that wasn’t a real question. I was being snarky, comparing him to another resentment filled, scapegoating Austrian who had a penchant for arsenal-building.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: With the deflationists at the Fed and the mandatory Paygo cuts coming, what makes you think we’ll see inflation?
Mike J
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve never seen the word illegal applied to Brits or Swedes who overstayed their visa. When a conservative complains about illegals, he is complaining about Hispanic people, not about their immigration status,
germy
@sharl:
I didn’t know that. He looks and sounds off-putting to me, and the reports I read surrounding his suspension made him seem like an asshole. Well, hopefully he’ll learn from this experience. Or probably not.
Fr33d0m
Calling him an Asshole is a bit general for my liking. He is a repugnant con (repugnicon) artist–a dedicated marketer of the snake oil school. He thinks tactically, not strategically and yes, he falls well short of a savvy tactician. Those things are all an outgrowth of being a repugnicon so as far as definitions go, they are of little help.
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: The Masters of the Universe feel they’re not earning enough– and the way to earn more (and immiserate the undeserving) is to raise prices. It’s the supply-side version of immiseration.
danielx
Names please.
ETA:
Shame? You have got to be fucking kidding me. Shame is an alien concept to people holding those views.
TS
@Millard Filmore:
If the US stock market dies – so will the markets around the world. Trump will be blamed for it – so there will be a positive amid the crash.
Matt McIrvin
@James E. Powell:
Some of whom were the paleocon/neo-reactionary types who turned into the alt-right, or their unclassifiable anarchist tech-bro enablers.
Now the intra-right schism is cutting the other way and we’re seeing the neocons say apparently sensible things. They’ll be stupid again soon enough.
mike in dc
I think Trump is the apotheosis of the politics of resentment that Republicans(like Rick Wilson et al) have been pushing for decades now. Resentment of cultural change, resentment of women and minorities asserting themselves, resentment of “political correctness”(the demand for public respect by women, people of color, LGBT folk etc), resentment of minorities as a potential threat to their apex socioeconomic status, etc. It has culminated in an attitude that anything goes, so long as it hurts their perceived enemies.
I think we should essentially write off around half of Republican voters, not in the sense of never doing anything that benefits them or addresses their economic concerns, but in the sense of treating their policy preferences re diversity and social justice issues as essentially irrelevant, and in the sense of writing off their votes. Just consolidate our base, persuade those who are persuadable, and understand why those who seem persuadable really aren’t. Hint: lots of them are covert bigots.
dnfree
@Millard Filmore: I moved about 1/4 of my retirement account (I’m retired) into a cash account earlier this year. When I was working there used to be a fixed account in my 401(k) but my IRA doesn’t have one like that. This makes about 1% or less a year, but I figure that will be better than losing money when the rest of my account does.
Corner Stone
@Mike J: Hmmm, illegal Mexican with four kids making $90K a year, all cash, and getting insurance for all for $50/monthly. This sounds like it happened.
kindness
I would like to share the author’s feeling that Trump isn’t leading us to fascism but I can’t. The evidence betrays that notion daily.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Muh Wall
Corner Stone
@mike in dc: Where do the porgs fit in for this strategy? Dammit! Wrong thread.
Bill Arnold
@joel hanes:
Re Doug in update at top,
Have to agree in part with Joel; Trump and team may well lead us significantly closer to fascism, or even all the way if there is a (e.g. engineered) national emergency. Not a fait accompli though IMO, rather a trend that must be fought, hard. And reversed if there is a Democratic wave in 2018.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@mike in dc:
Exactly. They thought they could control their killer virus, but it got out of the lab and consumed them.
Corner Stone
@germy: He comes across like an obnoxious prick. I wouldn’t want anything to do with the guy.
wmd
@mike in dc:
Yes. The 27% will never change. There’s somewhere North of 10% of the remaining republicans that also won’t change… Identifying the ones that can be taught is difficult, but may have value.
Identifying non voters that could vote for progressive policies and giving them a reason to vote probably will pay off more.
Major Major Major Major
CNN news app just pushed me this:
@Corner Stone: I sure hope that [redacted] ended up [redacting] that porg.
Yutsano
@Corner Stone: SPOILERS!!!!
Millard Filmore
@Corner Stone:
Probably, but if the USA goes down, Russia will take Europe down, and I figure China and its neighbors have the best chance to survive the madness.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@wmd: Cal taxes retirement, unlike Nevada. Sounds like your Austrian Mechanic is just coming up with excuses to change states.
catclub
@Ocotillo:
A recession after 12-17 years of stock market growth is a long time to go without one. I would be surprised if we go that long since 2009
without a recession, but it will be possible because the present expansion has been so weak. It may also be possible because the rest of the world economy is NOW starting to grow better than the US economy – which can carry the US economy along.
A crash is a different matter. I do not think this tax bill will have large effects on the economy – neither huge growth nor a crash.
Crash frequency is more like once in 30 years. We have a ways to go before people forget.
Barbara
@dnfree: In 2008, I did move a significant amount of money into cash because my husband couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t. I told him what I believe to be true as a general proposition. To a certain extent, we have to have faith that at least as far as the stock market is concerned, the common interests of most of us will bring it back to equilibrium, and things will get better. If the bottom really falls out such that the stock market no longer matters, then chances are good that cash will no longer matter either, and whether we like it or not, we are all in this together, and a great big wad of cash is never going to be the difference in determining who will survive in the long run. Above all else, I believe that survivalists are stupid. Human survival depends on group level cooperation.
Juice Box
@schrodingers_cat: My poodles strongly resent that characterization.
schrodingers_cat
@Mike J: Be that as it may to buy insurance under the ACA or get subsidies you have to have proof of income, and proof of citizenship or permanent residency. Troll’s fake example would fail to get subsidies on both counts.
Barbara
@Millard Filmore:
Russia will not take Europe down. Russia’s GDP is something like 2/3 of Italy’s GDP. I still find that to be a shocking statistic. Russia has a big land mass ruled by a man with a very tiny vision for his country and people.
schrodingers_cat
@Juice Box: No offense to your noble poodles was intended.
GregB
@wmd:
You might have to consider that this person is dishonest.
39 states? How long has he been here?
I don’t think even serial killers move that often.
different-church-lady
It gives the appearance of meaning to a life in turmoil. In actual fact, it subtracts both meaning and significance.
Basic decency has been abandoned, if not outright vilified. If basic decency had a face, a lot of these people would cheer every time it got punched.
We live in an age of assholes. It did not happen organically — it was cultivated very deliberately. Shame is no tool against these people, because shame has been bred out our society. Shunning might work, but admonitions won’t. They want you to attempt to shame them because it gives them another opportunity to be self-righteous assholes.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: Although if you want some on-topic porg content, here’s Trump with a porg for hair.
Yarrow
@GregB: Was thinking the same thing. And he’s a mechanic? I wouldn’t want him working on my car with all the lies he’s telling.
Peale
@catclub: crashes in 87, 99, 2001, 2002, 2008. One averted in the 1998. that’s not every 30years.
danielx
@wmd:
Not being able to buy untested firearms upsets him and he’s a mechanic?
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: Actually, I’m looking for some hot porg-on-porg action. No Trump’s need apply. Unless it’s Ivanka. Then there’s a plotline for that.
randy khan
Hillary would not have gotten into a Twitter feud with the father of a college basketball player over the son’s release from jail in China.
Hillary would not have cancelled the annual White House reception for winners of the Kennedy Center Honor, and would not have skipped the gala.
Hillary would have attended the White House Correspondents Dinner, where should have told better jokes than Trump would have told if he had decided to go.
Hillary would not make policy based on what she heard on Fox & Friends (or, for that matter, The Rachel Maddow Show).
Hillary would not have created a commission on voter fraud, although it fell apart so amusingly that I’m almost glad it was created.
Hillary would not have won Alec Baldwin an Emmy, although she might have won one for Kate McKinnon.
Corner Stone
@danielx: I honestly don’t know what the term untested firearm means.
? Martin
I’m betting the market will tank. The impending shareholder giveaway will personally favor me, but it’s not like I have any plans to turn around and spend that money, so the economic benefit will be completely lost. There isn’t a single company planning on raising wages. They’re all going to return money to shareholders or buyback shares (which is a different form of the same thing). Short term, we’ll get a market boost as investors maximize their exposure to the giveaway, but long term the lack of investment in revenue-generation will catch up, combined with the lack of consumer spending. Give it 2-3 years. Whatever money I do make from the shareholder giveaway will be dumped into my rainy day fund, given that I expect things to go to hell for a while.
The only possible upside here is that offshore cash will probably flow in to some degree, but given that share buybacks and shareholder dividends have to be paid out of domestic funds, that’s all that will result. Nobody is going to build a bunch of new factories. The lack of capital was never an impediment to do that – we’re drowning in capital to such an extent that you can borrow money for free. Whatever domestic factories were needed were easily afforded before, and another trillion in cash sloshing around won’t change that.
This is a straight up looting of the US economy.
Dave
@Peale: Think they were referring to crashed more akin to the one in 2008 that kicked off the Great Recession. As oppossed to sharp but short downturns. And I agree we are probably due some sort of downturn I just hope it happens when Trump is still in office. Since the president and their party tend to receive the bulk of the blame outside of fairly unusual circumstances.
wmd
@GregB: 40 years.
He’s clearly dishonest about his coworker.
wmd
@Corner Stone: California mandates safety tests of firearms – loaded firearm dropped from specified height cannot discharge, etc.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: Would you say you’re looking for
porgnography
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
This is worse than North Korea.
Howard Appel
I completely agree. There was, and is, no moral excuse for supporting Trump, or Moore, or most of the republican agenda.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@randy khan: Hillary did win an Emmy for McKinnon:
? Martin
@Corner Stone: California requires a number of features and tests be conducted. Guns must have a safety, they must be able to be repeatedly fired without malfunctioning (metal fatigue, wear, etc.), also tests to ensure that if a gun is dropped on a hard surface that it won’t fire accidentally, either with the safety on or off. Not unlike vehicle safety tests or those for other consumer products.
Bonnie
I agree with your comment about Trump and the Trump voters in the update 100 percent! It was very well said. Thank you.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: Also, CA requires a chamber load indicator and a magazine disconnect mechanism. My guess is that this requirement is the one that prevents most guns from being sold here.
Dave
@Major Major Major Major: Oh Jesus. Now it’s going to nag at me until I give in and do a Google search for porgography and I already know that will a poor decision.
Yarrow
So that Virginia district that was supposedly won by just one vote was challenged. Now it’s a tie. And here’s how they’ll pick the winner:
Film canisters?
germy
Senator Al Franken announced on Wednesday that he will officially step down from his position on January 2, 2018
Franken’s replacement, Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith, will be sworn in on January 3.
ruemara
@danielx: Ever read The Nation? The Intercept? Start there.
Doug, you and Tom make a critical error. They are acting in their own interests. A racially stratified society has guarantees for the right race. Economic, health and safety be damned, because the folks you wish to keep under your boot will stay under your boot. The fact that it ruins your world is just a price to be paid. As long as the left sidesteps that racist society is a much higher value outcome than economic prosperity or peace, they’ll continue to underestimate the depths of the modern conservative.
Major Major Major Major
@Dave: you are welcome
Ruviana
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Except they aren’t making us do and say those things yet.
joel hanes
@dnfree:
I went to Alaska in August, and new I’d be out of touch, so I liquidated about 50%.
Interest rates are finally rising; almost time to put more of that into bonds.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@different-church-lady: They do have shame, but it centers around being forced to admit their lies Nicloas is right, conservatives hate having to explain their idiocy like “So seriously think blacks would rather have their wages stolen from them.”
Sherparick
@tobie: @Barbara: It’s also a petro state. One of the reasons Putin has for sustaining Assad in Syria is to keep the pot boiling between KSA & Iran is to boost oil prices with a fear factor.
Corner Stone
@Dave:
Don’t you mean, a “porg decision”?
Millard Filmore
@Yarrow:
And the winner can claim a mandate. Maybe even chosen by God!
Dave
@Corner Stone: ……..yes.
Yarrow
Republicans are not popular and I don’t think popping champagne while they fund health care for kids is going to help that any.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
No, but they do feel pain. Make of that what you will.
Gvg
@schrodingers_cat: the sometimes troll isn’t saying he believes this nonsense, he is describing an actual anxious conservative, who is a bigot. It’s very common for this type of person to believe illegals are getting special benefits from our government that they don’t, which don’t exist. I have heard so many of these crackpot bigot theories from real people over the years. Remember Obamaphones? Reality they were Reagan phones and ilegal’s don’t get them. Bigots always think illegals are getting better things than citizen’s. They also think a lot of people are illegals that aren’t. I also note there is no reason for our politicians nor government officials to grant such rumored favors but that doesn’t get understood by the resentful idiots.
It’s nessesary to know which bad fables are being pushed and taking them into account but it’s not nessesary to sympathize with them.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: I thought that fucking thing was done. All done. Locked up. Nothing to be changed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@ruemara: Well that’s pining for the greatest hits of the 19thc WASP patriarchy, but that’s hardly fascism, in fact quite ordinary American douchbagger politics, see the Know Nothings and Woodrow Wilson.
Worth pointing out Wilson got his segregationist agenda enacted by using a wave of anti black race riots at the end of WWI. Maybe Charlotville was an attempt to try that again.
danielx
@ruemara:
Trump isn’t a savvy tactician, politically speaking, since a savvy pol doesn’t go around gratuitously insulting his or her allies. He’s not going to lead us towards fascism, although if he had a shred of competence he might. The Russian probe is legitimate, regardless of what Greenwald thinks or Taibbi either for that matter. And Trump supporters are by and large idiots, racists or both, mostly both. Those who don’t have net worth in excess of six figures, that is.
That there are lib commentators who appear to believe one or more of these things says more about their capacity for self-deception than their perspicacity.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: lol
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: Was yesterday. Overnight one of the people reviewing the ballots wrote a letter saying he was concerned about this one ballot and had been pushed to classify it for the D candidate. They found the ballot, the judges allowed it to be reviewed and declared it for the R. So here we are.
Miss Bianca
@ruemara:
QFT. Also, as long as the left sidesteps the fact that race and class are not mutually inclusive, it will continue to underestimate how much racism informs its own “economic anxiety of the common man” tropes.
danielx
@Yarrow:
Hey, I miss film canisters. A thousand and one uses, they had.
Yarrow
@danielx: They were useful. But how are they going to find enough them to do this ballot draw?
danielx
@Miss Bianca:
danielx
@Yarrow:
I’ll steer them to my old-school sister, who still develops her own b&w film. She can charge them ten bucks a canister and everybody will be happy.
Major Major Major Major
@danielx: I’ve got a couple but all mine have the democrat’s name in them.
raven
@danielx: Oh yea. . .
danielx
@Major Major Major Major:
I am quite sure my sib would be happy – nay, joyful – to arrange something similar.
JPL
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Merry Christmas Again to you also.
I miss baud.
Citizen_X
@wmd: Also, is there any way this guy and his wife are paying $1800 a month for insurance in Cali?
Sab
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Cal tax people will follow him to his new state.
ruemara
@Citizen_X: No.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@JPL: Thanks bud.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Yarrow: This is big +18.
Back in 2005 Dems were only +7 in October 2005 and they won 31 seats the next year.
This bodes well.
(fingers crossed)
Jeffro
Fuck the doubters, the difference-splitters, the circular firing squad. Full speed ahead; no, wait, WARP SPEED, Mr. Sulu! We are going to knock the holy living fuck out of these cretins in November and take back our country. I have no time for people like Nichols. If the only thing the wingers understand is power, wielded in full, then…let’s go grab it, wield it, and let them feel it in their bones.
Raise taxes substantially on the top 20% to undo this dumb #GOPTaxScam bill and then some? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Raise taxes on Trumpov (by business type and most especially the estate tax) and all these other scummy GOP millionaires and billionaires? Oh HELL YES
Raise taxes on pass-throughs until those guys WANT to go back to being individual filers? UM-HMMM.
As ye sow, GOP, as ye sow…
Yarrow
Another Trump nominee’s going to fall.
Russia, Russia, Russia!
wmd
@Citizen_X: I don’t have much insight into the individual market here – I’m covered through an employer’s plan. Given his and his spouse’s age it seems possible. My company shows they pay $4989 for coverage for me only. That’s ~$415 a month for a high deductible plan for a large group.
Someone already commented on the point of this anecdote – resentment and mythology continues to drive right wing thought. The illegal paying $50 per month is the modern equivalent of “young bucks buying :-)bones with food stamps”. I know there is no chance he’s correct about his coworker. He isn’t going to be convinced he’s wrong though. He’s a non voter. His wife will vote as though his views are true.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: And we’ll just let them write the ads for us, too: Trumpov Just Admitted the GOP’s Tax Cuts Were Mostly for Corporations and To Try and Eliminate Obamacare
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
I’ll believe that the day she stops being a fucking Republican and not one minute earlier.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
First, let us imagine the boat.
KithKanan
@Citizen_X: It’s 100% possible. Depends on a lot of factors.
If he’s really been working for 40 years and is near retirement, lets call him 60. If he makes too much for ACA subsidies, bronze plans on CoveredCA in my old Santa Cruz (well, actually, Live Oak) zip code start at $1356.50/month for two 60 year olds. Metal bands above Bronze start around $2,000/month.
Jeffro
@Yarrow: Man, even Devin Nunes’ upcoming attempt to slime DOJ and the FBI isn’t going to work…poor Devin!
Fire away, Bobby Three Sticks…get those charges dropped, and dropped HARD, and dropped SOON on all of these clowns!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Yarrow: “I hire the best people!”
magurakurin
@wmd:
Just tell him, “Delta is ready when you are.”
japa21
@Yarrow: If it was taken away from the Dem and given to the R, then R would be declared winner. My guess is they ruled it as unable to determine and threw it out.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: Oh my!
magurakurin
@Barbara:
that is my take exactly. Not that I have much optimism…
dollared
@TenguPhule: Thanks. That is my happy thought of the day.
magurakurin
@Barbara:
Corner Stone
@Barbara:
They are counting on a mass level extinction event.
dollared
@Jeffro: No. The exact Dems the Balloon Juicers support will say “let’s look forward, not backward,” and “we’ll reach across the aisle with our Republican brethren,” then make the Corporate tax cut permanent and offer Chained CPI on Social Security and an age 67 on Medicare, to make things balance out.
JR
@MattF: Ben graham approach is usually safe. Mix of treasuries and index. Sure you won’t grow as fast as the market but you don’t get killed at margin call.
magurakurin
@dollared: Delta is ready when you are
Jeffro
My understanding is that Trump is not going to sign the bill until January 3 so that the automatic Medicare cuts do not kick in until 2019
This needs to be talked about for the next 11 months
lowtechcyclist
The fact that this bill has serious incentives for corporations to move jobs offshore really cinches the whole deal IMO. (Not that there was much doubt lately, but this is something inarguable AFAICT.) This was one of the major aspects of the supposed ‘economic anxiety’ of Trump supporters, and Trump ran hard on it, even taking credit during the transition for bringing jobs back to America or keeping them here.
Now he bribes corporations to take their jobs out of the country, and his fans keep on loving him. All they care about is when he sticks it to one of the groups they’re mad at – blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, liberals, bureaucrats, college professors, etc.
This one (as they see it) sticks it to Dems and liberals, for no other reason than because we were against this monstrosity. But no other reason is needed. The fact that, in more practical terms, they’re sticking it to themselves doesn’t matter. For a moment, it turns their rage into gloating. Yum.
TenguPhule
@JR:
If you’re buying on margin, you’re doing it wrong.
TenguPhule
@Barbara:
Which is why you eat the survivalists first in an emergency.
Kathleen
@randy khan: Hillary would not have excluded African American journalists from the White House Christmas Party.
Chyron HR
@dollared:
Translation: “Both parties MUST be the same, because otherwise it was suicidally stupid of me to stay home on election day.”
mai naem mobile
I know this makes me a bad person but honestly I hope all 9f these fuckers suffer really really long painful deaths with intractable pain and where they are fully aware of what’s happening to them. Not some dementia where they’re not aware of what’s happening to them.
Mike J
@Kathleen:
Nor invited Wayne LaPierre to the same party on the anniversary of Sandy Hook.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
During the 1986 election cycle, the stock market went up 22% and Raygoon lost a whooping 8 Senate seats and control of the Senate. 6 of the loses were by incumbents in deep red states.
During the 2006 election cycle, the sock market went up 12% and Dubya lost 6 incumbent Senate seats, control of the Senate, with 5 of the loses coming in red states.
Yarrow
@randy khan: @Kathleen: @Mike J: You’re in the wrong thread with these. John’s list is the previous thread.
Doug!
@ruemara:
I agree with you, but all those “benefits” are psychological. Racism won’t pay the rent.
Amaranthine RBG
TPM reporting that Mueller has documents showing McGahn researched Flynn’s liability and reported to president that Flynn had likely violated law.
How in the world did Mueller get such documents?
It was after transition so they, presumably, weren’t in that batch.
d58826
Not sure if the Telegraph is a scandal sheet or a believable sourve but
Well at least Der Fuhrer will be able to claim one thing that no other president has done – start WWIII.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@dollared: You mean like how Bernie has repeatedly said he wants to work with Trump and how he says his best friend in the senate is climate denying racist James Inhofe
Calouste
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: There are only about 150 districts that have a Cook PVI of R+9 or higher.
Yarrow
@Amaranthine RBG: From White House counsel Don McGahn who is covering his own rear end? “I didn’t obstruct justice! I told the president!”
(((CassandraLeo)))
@d58826: It’s right-leaning, but it’s pretty reliable. It’s probably the most reliable of the right-leaning British press alongside the London Times. It’s certainly not the Daily Mail – it’s not given to printing poorly sourced allegations. If they’re printing that, I’m not going to sleep well over the next several nights.
John Fremont
@? Martin: And at another blog I read frequency, the 1 percent know how to move money around to make money bit not much else. You only get one chance to smash and grab, but it doesn’t last. You have to know how the wealth was amassed in the first place, which the current plutocrats don’t know that much about.
joel hanes
@japa21:
My guess is they ruled it as unable to determine and threw it out.
It was previously categorized as “spoiled”, since both names were marked, but the R lawyer prevailed with the argument that it was an R ballot because
– The filled-in bubble for Jones was subsequently X-ed out
– The ballot had valid R votes for all other contests
So they moved it from the spoiled category to the R column, increasing the number of valid ballots by one.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@joel hanes: IOKIYAR
SFBayAreaGal
Damn it. The vote for the Orange piece of shit was racism, racism, racism.
James E. Powell
@lowtechcyclist:
And in a related story
Amaranthine RBG
@Yarrow:
That’s possible but I would expect that McGahn would take a, shall we say, maximalist position on the scope of attorney-client privilege regarding his communications with the president, no matter whether precedent is on his side. I would be astounded if McGahn had just caved and offered these documents without either asserting the privilege or at least having a very public fight about it.
magurakurin
@SFBayAreaGal: to be fair there were healthy doses of xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia, too.
sharl
This sort of thing has been kinda haunting my mind since the 2008 election, during the crashing economy, when there was a fair amount of evidence – some of it admittedly anecdotal in nature – that making consequential decisions based on your racism is a privilege reserved mostly for the prosperous. From 2008:
Racists for Obama — Plenty of white bigots will vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday. There are some things they fear more than black people.
That story came after a fivethirtyeight post – a report from western Pa. – that included this quote from a home there, as reported by an anonymous Obama campaign volunteer: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
The racism will always be there for most of us white folks. A lot of us just need to keep it locked in the closet and not be allowed near the controls, while we learn to dis-empower it. Of course, so many us fail to find the motivation to even be interested in that endeavor. Well policed neighborhoods and Fox News help in maintaining that comfy cocoon, where biases remain confirmed and safely unchallenged.
ETA: That first link goes to Salon. That site has become much worse over the years, and sometimes gives my browser fits.
Another Scott
@(((CassandraLeo))): OTOH, the Pentagon (and the US military in general before it) has plans for all kinds of things that never happen. War Plan Red:
Yes, having Donnie and the Trumpists in power now is extremely dangerous when it comes to the DPRK. But plans aren’t destiny.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
The morons are parroting these press releases like it’s fact. I mean, Jesus CHRIST. Why do we need them? If I want to read bullshit from ATT I don’t need an overpaid intermediary.
He added one word to this propaganda “breaking” That’s his sole added value.
TenguPhule
@Chyron HR:
Be fair, that kind of shit more or less happened a lot during the Bush reign of error.
We won the Social security battle then with a lot of luck and effort. But our Democratic Senators kept crossing that fucking aisle time and again.
hugely
@wmd: dood rugar and calibre? Its spelled calibar do try harder
TenguPhule
They passed it in the House.
All bets are off now.
Who will be the first Republican to die?
Sab
@KithKanan: Wow! And I’m freaked out about $1000 per month as +60 year old in Ohio.
Jeffro
@d58826: I wonder if they are considering that North Korea has nothing to lose by bloodying our nose (or South Korea’s, or Japan’s) right back.
Given trumps rhetoric and attack of almost any kind is likely to be seen as the beginning of the end by the North Korean leader ship . Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are going to die .
It is only unthinkable until it happens
Jeffro
@SFBayAreaGal: you’re right – it was and is white, not economic, anxiety
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Kay: Holy shit. I clicked on to that guy’s twitter feed. it a bunch of rich knuckle draggers whining about their taxes. One guy was talking about his yacht and screaming about his taxes. Sickos.
gorram
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Eh, but that’s a technique the Third Reich tried in plenty of Central European villages they rolled up on during the early parts of WWII – show up, tell the locals they should riot against Jews, frame that as a reason they just have to round them up.
Classical Fascism of that era in Europe, particularly among the Nazis, was often directly inspired by US predecessors, especially the KKK. Old timey racism here echoes fascist perspectives, tactics, and ideas as a roundabout result.
gorram
@danielx: Notice how that robs “the common man” of agency and responsability. We live in the information age – these people can easily learn and usually already know how these policies will directly affect them. White people who cry that they have to be racist to get ahead aren’t always poor, but even when they are they’re seldom hoodwinked. They’re active accomplices in the situation.
Failing to recognize that is part and parcel with some really toxic ideas about White innocence this society has.
J R in WV
@hugely:
Nope. Ruger is the firearms company name, and the size of projectiles is spelled caliber. Maybe you should pay attention to the spell check red line under misspelled words? Both of you were wrong. And dude is not spelled dood. Extra stupid!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Kay:
Even Bill Kristol agrees with us.
Another Scott
@Ocotillo: Market timing almost never works.
The way I think of it is: If the big boys take their money out of the stock market, where are they going to put it instead? Bonds? Interest rates are still far too low. Housing? There’s not enough inventory for sale to create a new huge bubble (yet). Art? It’s already insane, and there aren’t enough Old Masters to go around. That bubble will burst before the stock market. Oil and other commodities? Yeah, I don’t think so.
There’s too much savings in the world, and not enough money circulating and doing productive things. Inflation will stay low because of that.
Dollar-cost averaging in a low cost broad-based index fund is the way to go. With some sensible fraction in bonds and money markets and the like (in a credit union or local bank that you trust).
tl;dr – If you get out, when do you get back in?? If you can’t answer that, then you probably shouldn’t get out.
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Amir Khalid
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Ahem. It’s The Times of London. City name not part of newspaper name.
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
Kevin Drum snarks on the AT&T thing pretty well:
AT&T Is Seriously Sucking Up to Donald Trump
Letting the Republicans and their sycophants dominate framing is not excusable. Disqualifying if one aspires to being taken seriously as a press outlet.
Also worth a look for its complaints about acquiescing to Republican framing: Republicans Didn’t Reform the Tax Code. They Never Wanted To. (Jonathan Chait)
pattonbt
@Kay: $200,000,000? I seriously doubt this becomes a reality. That said, it should ne easy enough to refute soon. Either when bonuses are due in the new year or when financial statements are released an accrual for such a liability on their balance sheets.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Another Scott: Thanks; maybe I will actually sleep tonight after all.
@Amir Khalid: Fair enough, but in my defence, I wrote that reply on my phone and I was more concerned with clarity (e.g., differentiating it from the FTFNYT) than with 100% accuracy. Though I guess the “British” part already differentiated it. Oh well.
El Cruzado
Ah yes, Trump voters. You’ve got to remember that these are just simple white working people. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know…
hugely
@J R in WV: i was snarking dood